Leagueville, an isolated community in eastern Henderson county, owes its beginning to a land certificate that originated in 1850 by Aaron York, surveyor of a league of land west of the Neches River.

The area was referred to as “The League” and the “ville” was later added, probably when the community secured a post office in 1889.

By 1855, the Sublett family had gained control of the land around Leagueville and sold it to Matthew Cartwright in 1857. In 1871, B.T. and Annie (Cartwright) Roberts had acquired the property. But when the couple died, the York heirs sued to regain control of the property, but lost on appeal in 1875.

The litigation slowed the development of the area and it really didn’t become a community until the late 1800s. The community had a school, and a cemetery was established on the school property. The school, however, was consolidated with Brownsboro in 1934.

At its peak, Leagueville had two general stores, its church, two cotton gins, a blacksmith, and a grist mill.

A broken discarded mill stone from the grist mill was placed around a Texas historical marker by the cemetery when it was erected in 2004.

The coming of the railroad through Brownsboro in the late 1800s left Leagueville off the beaten path and, with the building of Highway 31 from Tyler to Athens beside the railroad, Leagueville suffered another blow. In the old days, a road running through Leagueville was known as the Athens-to- Tyler road.

Leagueville’s cemetery was once maintained in the way of many old East Texas cemeteries. The grounds were hoed, grass was removed, and the graves were mounded. But because of erosion and the time required to maintain the graveyard, mowing was begun in the 1950s.

Many graves in the cemetery are unmarked and the names of those buried have been lost in the passage of time.

One year, when the cemetery was being expanded, an old dipping vat used to control ticks on cattle was discovered in the ground.

Leagueville’s church, which began as the Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church in 1880, remains in its original location and was preceded by churches at Rock Hill and New York.

One of the town’s earliest settlers was Malachiah Reeves, a Civil War veteran, who served as a postmaster in 1906 and 1907. He was licensed to preach at Leagueville and is buried in the local cemetery.

Each second Sunday of June, Leagueville’s former residents and their families come back to the old town for a memorial day.

(Bob Bowman of Lufkin is the author of more than 40 books about East Texas. He can be reached at bob-bowman. com)